


Bittersweet Without the Sweet

by nahco3



Series: Three Words [3]
Category: Football RPF
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-29
Updated: 2011-08-29
Packaged: 2017-10-23 05:40:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 598
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/246836
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nahco3/pseuds/nahco3
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Silva's injured. Morientes and Villa visit him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bittersweet Without the Sweet

**Author's Note:**

> written in 2008.

David doesn't come to see Silva in the hospital.

It's better that way, he tells himself, lying on his back counting cracks in the ceiling, listening to the steady beeping of his monitors. He's tired and he hurts and it's too early in the season to feel this beaten down – hell, he hasn't had a season yet, but he already feels faded like a toy left outside too long.

His mother sits next to the bed, fusses over him, asks him "How's my baby feeling?" and pesters his doctors. He doesn't tell her the morphine makes him feel sick, just lies still and looks up.

I'm not your baby anymore, he thinks, listening to her lecturing the nurses. I've grown up.

Mori comes by. Of course, Mori comes and David doesn't, bright smile lopsided, hair charmingly mussed. He sits down next to Silva's bed, stretches his legs out, laughing at himself for no reason. Silva wishes he could muster up the energy to hate him, but he's tired, his bones are heavy and he can't think.

"I'm too young to feel this old," he says to Mori, and Mori offers him an apologetic half-smile that could mean anything, could mean hospital beds and injuries, could mean disappointing seasons bleeding forward, could mean David.

Silva needs to stop thinking about David.

"Don't worry, kid, you'll be back in no time" Mori says and ruffles his hair. Silva feels the quick warmth of jealousy cut through the meds for just a second. But he can't find the words for the ache in his chest and the sparkle in David's eyes, can't even find the pieces of anger he saved so carefully all summer. So he says:

"I'm not a kid anymore," manages to meet Mori's eyes, and for once they're not amused, at least, not entirely.

"No," Mori says, slowly, thinking of white and purple histories, "you are." And then he smiles again and is gone.

They let him out of the hospital a few days later, and he lies on the couch, watches news shows and talk shows, plays videogames, reads a little. He's itching to start physical therapy, to prove to them all he's not Vicente, but he can't, not yet.

David comes by one afternoon. Silva's parents aren't home, and David still has the key that Silva gave him last season when Silva was young and stupid, young and stupid and scared David wouldn't stay.

Now, Silva doesn't know, but David sits down anyway, next to Silva.

"You doing ok?" David asks, twisting his wedding ring, and Silva wonders when David bothered to care enough about him to regret anything. He bites his lip, and nods, stopping himself (just barely) from confessing that he hurts, a lot of things hurt. He isn't six, or even twenty, anymore.

David watches him, carefully, his eyes even darker than usual but Silva suddenly can't tell why. He reaches forward and cups Silva's chin, not gently but not hard.

"You look tired," he says, finally, and shakes his head. "I shouldn't have come by." And he turns to leave, not a threat this time but truly, finally, leaving, and Silva can't let him.

"I'm not tired," he protests, a child's lie, and he knows it, but David turns back to look at him anyway, pauses and smiles his sharp smile. Silva falters, looks down. "Please stay."

"You don't need me to tuck you in," David says. "You're older than that."

And he leaves, but he takes the key with him, so Silva falls asleep and wakes up, weighed down and aching.


End file.
